Orange Sky
by Papilio.Ageha
Summary: Being a second year captain isn't easy for him. Even so, as long as his friends are here with him... April 14, a birthday fic for Shiraishi Kuranosuke


**First of all, happy birthday Shiraishi! I managed to present him a birthday fic YAY! *cough*notdoingmyhomework*coughcough* This is my second birthday fanfic. Hope you like it :)**

**For your information, this fic taken place a year before the series begin, so Shiraishi and most of the regulars are second year, Zaizen is first year and Kinchan is in elementary. Oh, Chitose hasn't transferred yet so he's still a part of Shishigaku team. And according to pair puri fanbook, Osamu is a new coach.**

**Another note: assuming that they haven't known each other well at that time, I'll make them calling each other by surname.**

**The usual disclaimer: Everything belong to Konomi-sensei, yes, even Shiraishi's birthday!**

**Sorry for any grammatical mistake and/or typo as the only perfect things in this fandom are perfect tennis and Bible.**

**Enjoy!**

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><p><strong>Orange Sky<strong>

April 14, it was only a week and some days after the new school year started, but the Shitenhouji boys' tennis club had already had their own problems: new coach, an upcoming intra-school tournament, some joint practices with other schools… and a second year captain. Such a rare issue, usually the team's captains were third graders and so had been this team's on the previous year; however the coach chose a sophomore instead of any third year regular this time.

Although the new captain had promising skills in tennis, it wasn't easy for him to lead the team. He found it really strange to tell his seniors what to do, though no one showed objection towards his leading. The freshmen were also hard to handle as some of them were still lack of stamina and skill to follow the training menu.

Shiraishi Kuranosuke scratched his head with the blunt tip of a pencil he was holding. In his other hand, there was an order for the upcoming joint practice with Kyuushuu's Shishigaku. No matter how he tried to fill in the names, he always met a dead end. Singles and doubles... He couldn't decide which one should play on which game; as everyone had their own strong points and weak points. Though he had known the regulars' skill and the basic of creating the matches' order fairly well, he still had no idea how to manage a big team.

"Shiraishi-kun~" Someone called. Shiraishi looked up from his paper and faced a bespectacled boy called Konjiki Koharu.

"Yes?"

"A Shishigaku's representative has arrived to talk about the practice." Koharu informed.

Shiraishi glanced at a clock on the wall, gosh, he had been really concerned in deciding the order that he didn't realize for how long the time had passed. "Thanks Konjiki." He said as putting his work aside and stood up.

"You haven't finished the order yet?" Oshitari Kenya asked in disbelief as he read the paper. "Geez, you really take your time doing this thing."

"Well, it's just kinda hard to decide…" Shiraishi reasoned up.

"Why don't you just draw a lot of regulars' name and fill it according to the result? That'll safe some time, you know?" said Hitouji Yuuji.

Koishikawa Kenjirou shook his head. "I don't think it's a good idea."

"Hm, I agree with Koishikawa. We should give our best even though it's only a practice matches." Ishida Gin added.

Actually drawing a lot could be a really brilliant idea, Shiraishi thought; then again, as Gin said, they should give their best.

"I personally think it is a quite good idea, Hitouji-kun." Koharu winked, making the said boy blushed.

"R- really? I'm really flattered hearing it from you." Yuuji smiled sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.

Their random talk about deciding the order went for a quite long time, making every of them forget about a certain Shishigaku representative that was waiting outside the clubroom.

"Excuse me?" A fairly tan skinned boy peeked inside the room as he thought that the Kansai boys really _took their time_ calling for the captain.

"Oh, sorry to make you wait." Shiraishi quickly greeted, trying to hide the fact that he had also forgotten about this person's presence.

"You must be the second year captain people are talking about." The Kyuushuu boy said, letting himself in. "The name is Chitose Senri."

"Nice to meet you, Chitose-kun. I'm Shiraishi Kuranosuke," Shiraishi replied. "And these are some of our team members." The others greeted Chitose afterwards.

"Let's talk straight to the point, I'm sent here to check the exact time of our teams' joint practice."

Shiraishi nodded and took a record notebook on one of the desks. "Right, just like what we've planned before, it'll take place on the golden week holiday for 2 days: April 29 and-"

He was cut by a knock on the door and then they heard a familiar voice belonged to their new coach Watanabe Osamu.

"Hey, Shiraishi-_buchou_, there's a problem on the courts. I think you'd better go see it."

Shiraishi frowned. The captain title wasn't really amusing for him, as it only gave him more troubles. After apologizing to Chitose, he exited the room and run to the courts, followed by the others.

There, he saw a little redhead was shouting to the members.

"Naa, big bros, you're strong, aren't you? Play a game with me!"

"Stop joking around, brat! This isn't a play ground for elementary kids." One of the boys said.

"There's no way we'll play with you. After all we're the strongest team in this region. We don't play against a little kid like you." Said the other.

The boy grinned ear to ear and looked like he didn't afraid of the bigger boys around him at all. "That's why I want to play with you. You're very strong, right? Right?"

"Geez, this kid. How many times we've told you we don't play-"

"What's going on here?" Shiraishi asked as he approached the group.

"Oh, good timing, _buchou_. You see, this kid insists to play. We've told him to go though."

Shiraishi looked at the little boy and bent down. "Boy, what's your name?"

"Kintarou! Tooyama Kintarou!" The boy answered excitedly. "Hey, are you the big boss? If that so, you must be the strongest here! I wanna play against you first then!"

Shiraishi sighed. The boy called Kintarou was really loud. "Listen, Tooyama-kun, you can't play here."

"EEHHHH? WHY?"

"The outsiders are prohibited to enter the courts." Shiraishi tried to explain slowly. "As you're not a member of this club, you're not allowed to play here."

"But I wanna play here with you guys." Kintarou pouted.

"I'm really sorry, but it's better for you to go home."

"No~~~~ I wanna play! I don't wanna go home yet!"

"Tooyama-kun…"

"I wanna play tennis! I wanna have a match!" Kintarou started randomly swinging his racket here and there.

"Stop it! It's really dangerous! Tooyama-kun!"

Nevertheless, Kintarou didn't listen to Shiraishi's warning. At a point his racket slipped off his hand and flew, accidentally hit a poor ichinen and knocked him out.

"Ups."

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><p>"Are you okay, Zaizen-kun?"<p>

"Yeah, somehow." The unlucky first year named Zaizen Hikaru replied half-heartedly as he cooled down his itching head with tap water.

"I'm really sorry about that." Shiraishi said as he handed out a towel to the younger boy.

"Nah, it's not your fault."

"Still, I should have stopped him."

"That's purely because of misfortunate."

"But if I had stopped him earlier, you wouldn't get hurt."

"At least you've made him go away. "

"But…"

"Stop that, okay?" Zaizen groaned. "It wasn't your fault. Period."

"O- Okay?"

"If there's anybody to be blamed, it should be the one who let that crazy redhead in." Zaizen added. "And maybe I shouldn't have stood there either from the very beginning."

Shiraishi chuckled hearing his fellow teammate's last sentences.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Oh, nothing."

"…weirdo."

Zaizen turned and walked away with Shiraishi following behind him till they arrived at the courts. Strangely, they found no one there though it was still the practice time.

Shiraishi looked around. There was no way everyone had gone home in a really short period of time; he had left the court to check Zaizen for only around 5 minutes. Osamu hadn't told him either that the practice would have ended earlier today.

Curiously, he walked to the clubroom, wondering if someone was still there he turned the doorknob.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

Everyone in the clubroom cheered and started singing happy birthday song. Some boys suddenly popped behind him with confetti.

"Wha-?" Shiraishi looked blankly at his teammates, his mouth opened in surprised.

Birthday? Was today his birthday? Yes, it was his birthday! He really wanted to bang his head onto the wall for forgetting his own birthday. Perhaps he had been thinking about the club's issue too much that he had forgotten a very crucial thing of his own life.

"Guess you really forget about your own birthday." Kenya pushed him inside the room, the others brought him a birthday cake with 14 candles and they sang happy birthday for one more time.

"Make a wish!" They cheered in unison.

Shiraishi closed his eyes. What kind wish would he make? Honestly, he didn't know. The only thing he could think of right now was… he wished he could lead this team to the national tournament.

National tournament. That was what he wished for.

He blew out the candles.

"What was your wish?" Koharu asked excitedly.

Shiraishi laughed. "Well, that's a secret."

"The first slice is for our birthday captain Shiraishi; the second is for Zaizen, as he has bought us time; the third is for our guest Chitose…" Koishikawa announced.

"Hey! What about me? I'm your coach! I deserved one of the first slices." Osamu complained.

"Well, you can have the fourth one." Yuuji grinned.

"Happy birthday, sorry I didn't know about it." Chitose said.

Shiraishi chuckled. "No problem. Thanks for participating."

"Excuse me~!" someone said, gaining everyone attention at once, it was Kintarou. "Sorry about earlier," He squeaked. "Here I brought you takoyaki as apologize," he handed a box of freshly baked takoyaki to Shiraishi, and then he gave one more to Zaizen. "Sorry about your head. Does it hurt?"

"Of course it hurts; he even fainted because of it." Kenya laughed and received a death glare from the black haired freshman.

Ignoring the fight his friend was picking up with a junior, Shiraishi looked at Gin, who was in charge of slicing the cakes. Gin looked back at him and nodded, handing him a slice of cake.

"Here, cake for you." He said, giving Kintarou the cake.

Kintarou received the cake with sparkling eyes and replied cheerfully. "Thank you!"

Shiraishi smiled seeing the little boy. He patted him on the head. "If you really want to play with us, come again next year…"

That was his fourteenth birthday. An unforgettable birthday celebrated with his teammates under the afternoon orange sky. He still had to learn more about leading the club; however, as long as his friends were with him, he believed that everything would be alright.

_Sing a song for you, friendship forever_

_Never end that's like the shining sun_

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><p><strong>The title and the last two sentences are taken from Sasaki Yoshihide's Orange Sky. This wasn't a song fic though ;)<strong>

**It's just me or Konomi-sensei and I are connected in one and another way? *shot* To tell you the truth, when I was planning this story, I read news about a new OVA and it's about Shiraishi's second year life as buchou XD (LOL this kind of coincidence also had happened before! The first one was about Akaya's angel mode)**

**Once again, happy birthday Shiraishi!**

**Thank you for reading. Please review and show more love to him!**


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